What a joy it is -- and an absolute relief -- to see a movie like Monster
House after treading through the murky depths of animated mediocrity for the last
few years. It's about time.

You see, a strange thing happened on the way to the new digital animation
revolution. Well, a few things. First, it became unimaginably popular. And so
naturally, everyone wanted to get in on it, the movement took off and with it died
most of hand-drawn animation . . . and, unfortunately, a lot of novelty and
originality, too. Things got stale, dumbed-down, inane and, in some cases, almost
unwatchable.

It's odd, how the advances that were supposed to usher in an era of new-found sophistication a la Toy Story and Shrek instead has brought us more of that
old garbage that used to go direct-to-video and that you kept stocked right next to
those insufferable Mary-Kate and Ashley movies. The kind of movies you only
allowed the kids to watch when you were upstairs "napping" or when the
babysitter was over.

It's tough times like these that make Monster
House all the more rewarding. This is a kind of throwback to the suspense/action
kids' movies of the 1980s -- a film critic friend of mine mentioned E.T. and The
Goonies as probable influences, and that gets it just about right. Like those two,
Monster House is the kind of movie that taps into childhood fears and fantasies,
it's as if we're getting the movie straight from a child's mind -- and I mean that as
a compliment. Steven Spielberg and Richard Donner understood how to do that in
such a way that adults could understand, relate and be understood just as well as
the kids -- if not more so.

First-time director Gil Kenan, working with executive producers Spielberg
and Robert Zemeckis, is a worthy disciple.

Everyone who was ever a child had that one creepy, foreboding house they
were scared to go into. We all had that grumpy, terrifying, unkempt neighbor (in
most cases, a scraggly old man). And we all had that year where we realized that
this was probably going to be our last time ever Trick-or-Treating before we finally
had to Grow Up. We all remember those years with a sort of bittersweet fondness.

Monster House is about all of those things,
blended together into an amalgamation of dazzling visuals and funny, wisecracking
dialogue. ("That ball cost me $28! I had to ask my mom for a dollar 26 times . . .
and I raked a lawn. I've never worked so hard in my life!" -- That sounds like
something I might have said when I was 11 or so.)

The two kids at the center of the story are DJ (voiced by Mitchel Musso) and
his best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) . . . and, needless to say, Chowder is the
plump one.

DJ lives across the street from the scary Mr. Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi,
providing the perfect voice for the crotchety old man always screaming at the kids
to get off my lawn!). Now, Nebbercracker's house has a reputation for, well, eating
things. Like, for instance, tricycles, basketballs, puppies, etc.

But it all hits the fan one day when Nebbercracker suffers an apparent heart
attack, leaving the children to walk on his lawn all they like . . . and investigate the
house themselves. Along for the ride is a young girl named Jenny (Spencer Locke),
the kind of girl the boys think they like, and start competing over, while really not
understanding what it is they're supposed to fall for, or do with, a female. It's a
confusing time, despite the boys' assertion that they have "lots of puberty."

In many ways, Monster House is a lot like The
Sandlot -- but instead of a giant killer dog in the neighbor's backyard, it's a giant
killer house that the kids fear and, inevitably, have to take on face-to-face. And I
mean face.

The ingeniousness of the animation in this movie comes to light when the
house comes to life -- and when it does, it really does. It has eyes and a mouth and
a long wet tongue, and a throat to swallow all those toys and small animals that it
has collected over the years. And when the kids try to break in and snoop around
. . . well, the house gets very, very angry. The house itself is a piece of fantastic
animation. It's way more expressive than the cars in Cars or most of the talking
animals in The Chronicles of Narnia . . . and certainly more expressive than the
creepy, dead-eyed, animatronic zombie freaks in The Polar Express.

Running a brisk 91 minutes, Monster House is a fun suspense/adventure
story for a while, delightfully odd and maybe a bit screwy . . . and then it kicks into
high gear. The climactic half-hour is sensational. Kenan seems to have mastered
his craft already. It's not just that the action is exciting -- Monster House offers
the kind of cinematography that we're only used to seeing in live-action fare.

In fact, in many scenes, the film almost seems
like it is live-action. That's the level of sophistication Kenan and his creative
collaborators have found -- and in a world of Madagascar and Hoodwinked and
Robots and Valiant, Monster House is something special.